Face in the News
Mitt Romney and vice presidential pick Rep. Paul Ryan sat down with Bob Schieffer for their first joint interview, which aired on Sunday's "60 Minutes," to discuss the vetting process, Medicare, and what's next for the campaign.
Although the seven-term Republican congressman is known for his budget plan, Romney said that the campaign would continue to run on his own plan. "I have my budget plan as you know that I've put out. And that's the budget plan that we're going to run on," Romney said.
When asked how he ultimately chose his running mate, Romney said that Ryan has the "experience and judgment, capacity and character to become President. And that was the most important criteria."
The two then expressed their ideas on Medicare reform. "There's only one President that I know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare," Romney said. Ryan added, "My mom is a Medicare senior in Florida. Our point is we need to preserve their benefits, because government made promises to them that they've organized their retirements around. In order to make sure we can do that, you must reform it for those of us who are younger. And we think these reforms are good reforms."
(Read more about the interview in The Boston Globe, Vanity Fair, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, National Journal, Current TV, Bloomberg, Washington Post, New York Magazine, Salon, Huffington Post, POLITICO, AP, Talking Points Memo, The Daily Beast, and Reuters)
Back in Washington, CBS News Correspondent Nancy Cordes filled in for Bob Schieffer on this Sunday's "Face the Nation" where Romney's vice presidential pick was the focus of the show.
Newt Gingrich, who famously referred to Paul Ryan's stance on Medicare last year as "right-wing social engineering," now says that Ryan has addressed his former objections.
"The one thing I objected to back in May of 2011 was that he eliminated Medicare for everybody, Gingrich said. "He came back with an improved Medicare plan. He met my only objection."
He described Ryan as an "extraordinarily exciting" vice presidential pick.
"You now have a national leader who is capable of talking in detail with the American people about some very complicated topics and that's a very unusual moment in American history," Gingrich said. On the Romney-Ryan ticket, Gingrich said, "I think it is an advantage that they are not part of the current mess."
(Read more about the conversation with Gingrich on The Hill, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and NPR)
Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said that Ryan's experience on Capitol Hill prepared him for the job at hand. "Paul Ryan's been in the Congress for 14 years, longer than Barack Obama when he decided to run for President," Fehrnstrom said. "He has leaders, governors, generals, members of the military brass calling him for advice and support for their programs. Of course he's prepared."
Stephanie Cutter, President Obama's deputy campaign manager, took a jab at Romney's VP choice, "It says something about Mitt Romney that he's picking someone who has a budget plan under which Mitt Romney would pay less than 1% in taxes."
Fehrnstrom addressed the negativity of the race, accusing the Obama campaign of "garbage talk" and mudslinging, and even referred to the campaign as "50 Shades of Mud," a pun on the popular novel "50 Shades of Grey."
"Mitt Romney is going to be running an issue-oriented campaign, waged on big ideas and not engage in the type of nasty negative politics that we've seen from the Barack Obama campaign," Fehrnstrom said.
Cutter responded, "We'd love to have a substantive debate. As of yesterday, Mitt Romney put some substance on the table. We'd love to talk about it."
(For more on the exchange between Cutter and Fehrnstrom, visit The Orlando Sentinel, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, The Hill, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, National Journal, POLITICO, and Talking Points Memo)